Gods that Have Left You Will Never Grace Your Home
by sandwch
Summary: Anne thinks Jacob will never see her. She's wrong.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, New Moon or Eclipse. I am merely playing with Meyer's hot werewolves for a while.

_Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.  
-Pearl Buck_

THREE WEEKS AFTER THE EVENTS OF ECLIPSE.

**ANNE**

_I had a dream once, of running on four flat, padded feet, of fur shifting in the wind. I could see the distant, foggy edge of St. James Island across the gray stretch of sea. The crunch of sand echoed under my paws and the whisper of the wind seemed to call to me. I felt something, some kind of tension in the air that betrayed the pressure of being watched. I chanced a look over my shoulder as the world, sand, sea, and sky sped past, and found the silhouette of a person in the far distance, watching me. _

Anne has sat behind Jacob Black for eleven years (not including the disastrous paint incident of '95), with never a second glance. She doesn't exactly blame him. She is a ghost among her classmates, small and thin enough to hide in her locker if she so wishes. No one looks at her, let alone Jacob Black. There's nothing to look at, after all.

Being invisible has its advantages. She knows things. There is a wealth of information tucked away under her skin. She pushes it back because it hurts to think of it, of things no one would ever tell her directly, of things she has to overhear to know.

There is nothing more painful than loneliness.

Whenever she thinks of Bella Swan, a yawning gap seems to separate her heart from the rest of her body. She can see Bella in the back of her mind, touching Jacob's hand like it's natural. Like it's right.

They haunt her sometimes, when she's alone in the darkness of her room and nothing seems right. When the sound of her brother's retching echoes in her ears and she longs for something, something to take it all away and it feels like the walls are closing in like jaws.

Sometimes she stares at herself in the mirror, at the frown lines between her brows and the tiny, premature crow's feet along the edges of her eyes. Her face is stretched tight, as if her bones long to peek out from under the curtain of her skin.

It's an old face, peeking out at her. All dark eyes and prematurity.

Sometimes she feels like all she has are threads keeping her grounded, threads that are slowly beginning to unravel. Jacob Black is one of those threads. He keeps her anchored, the memories of his broad back stretching ahead of her like a long whisper of road so comforting, she can almost feel warmth. Almost.

* * *

The first time Anne Tillery sees Jacob Black; she's crying.

Mrs. Greene has managed to tempt her away from her father and into her classroom with a promise of butterfly paintings. Anne can resist anything but butterflies.

Sniffling, she clutches her teacher's hand with a viselike grip. Mrs. Greene tries not to show her wince.

Despite every child's inescapable fear of kindergarten, a small group of brave Quileute children have already entered the brightly lit classroom. Three little boys, ranging in height and talking quietly amongst each other at a table set in the back corner look up when they enter.

The first time Anne Tillery sees Jacob Black; he pushes his long hair out of his face and looks right through her towards the window. Anne freezes. She stops crying, her breath leaves her. She just knows, deep down in her gut, that she's going to marry the little boy at the table in the corner. Her sniffles end.

Too bad their first meeting ends in disaster.

After showing her the pretty butterfly paintings on the wall, Mrs. Greene leads Anne to the table in the corner. "Quil, Embry, Jacob," she says. "This is Anne."

Anne peeks out behind Mrs. Greene's knee. Quil, a thickset little boy with thick hair and a piercing grin squints at her for a moment before smiling. Embry, the tallest and thinnest of the boys, pushes his long hair behind his ear and waves shyly. Jacob, the boy in the middle and the best looking, grins big and says in a loud voice that echoes in the almost empty classroom, "Your face is splotchy."

Anne reddens, and is quite tempted to start sobbing again. She should've known he'd be mean.  
Mrs. Greene frowns. "Jacob," she says, pulling out a little yellow chair across from the boys.

"That wasn't nice at all. Anne's going to sit with you three today, so I want you to treat her kindly alright?"

Jacob shrugs, reaching to pull some finger paints toward him. Quil chortles. "Okay Mizz G," he says brightly, grinning at the blushing, close to running Anne. "She's safe with us."  
"Good." Like all adults, Mrs. Greene doesn't notice the mischievous undertone. Grown ups don't notice anything. Anne knows instinctively that there's something going on. With the greatest trepidation, she sits down; her shoulders hunched up like a baby bird's. Mrs. Greene pats her shoulder comfortingly with her soft, warm hands and moves off towards her desk, muttering to herself.

The four children sit in silence for a moment, before Jacob leans forward, sniffing delicately. Anne, peeking around her hair, stares at him oddly, secretly taking back her earlier thoughts of marriage. Maybe he's mentally deficient.

"You smell weird," Jacob declares brightly. He grins like a puppy dog that's just peed on a rug. Quil and Embry giggle.

Anne is famous in her house for her temper tantrums. It takes her only two seconds before she's crying again, great heaving sobs. She leans across the table and snatches away the red container of finger paint Jacob has in front of him. She stands, her shoulders shaking violently, and pours it over his head.

Disaster.

* * *

Anne is convinced that the threads of her memories are all that keep her hanging on.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, New Moon or Eclipse. I am merely playing with Meyer's hot werewolves for a while.

_Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter._

_-Oliver Goldsmith_

**PT II**

**ANNE**

_And sometimes I am the person in the distance, watching the wolf break through the trees, a snarl curving its face into a grimace. For a wolf, it is huge, almost monstrous, and covered in thick, shaggy fur the color of midnight. Its eyes are yellow and cruel._

_Something like thunder erupts from the chasm of its mouth, and an instinctive, time honored fear takes hold of me. As prey, I turn on bare feet and begin to flee down the beach along the surf. Fog obscures the edges of the islands, the very crescent of the sky. I can feel the explosion of the wolf's pursuit, and my breath begins to wane. The sand feels like concrete, the fog weighing down on me like cotton, and I finally give up and turn, throwing my hands up to offer some kind of protection from the monstrous animal. _

_Only when it leaps do I awaken._

The forest was once Nina's very best friend. Now it is her enemy.

She awakens in the night to the howling of wolves through the trees, a baying that is both heartbreaking and terrifying. Her little two story cabin, once a retreat from the monotony of life, is now a nightmare. She dreads staying at home in the dark for fear of the wolves, who seem to scratch at the doors and windows with every intent to kill. She's seen their faces in dreams and waking moments, snarling and dark. Sometimes when she sits in front of the window to paint, she sees them moving through the trees.

Three weeks ago, she came home from the general store to find a pile of dead cats on her doorstep. Seven days ago, the mutilated corpse of a rabbit, tangled and broken, was lying on her bedroom floor.

There doesn't seem to be enough oxygen left in her body for breath. She doesn't know whether or not to scream. Of course, until she wakes up to the sound of breaking glass at three in the morning.

Her heart running like a terrified deer, she startles immediately upright in her bed. Living alone will do that to a girl; make her overly alert to night sounds and slight shifts.

Nina pulls her sweaty, tangled hair back from her forehead and steels herself. Thirty six and alone, she knows there isn't a single person who can do this for her. Her only neighbors are ten miles away, and her last boyfriend left three years ago.

She vibrates like a live wire as she tip toes from her bed to the doorway and the dark, yawning maw of the stairs. Come on, she tells herself, gripping the collar of her tee shirt. It was probably just the wind. Not a problem.

Only her logic seems more like stupidity.

She takes a deep yoga breath before reaching for the railing, which squeaks like a living thing and almost causes her to run screaming back to her room for the cordless and the comfort of the police operator, only her foot moves forward before she can turn, and she's walking down the stairs.

Before she can reach the bottom, she sees something move. Something pacing. Something bigger than a bear and darker than shadow.

Nina screams.

* * *

_It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind._

_-T.S. Elliot_

**JACOB**

_I'm somewhere in Canada now, but I don't know where exactly. Everything looks the same, and only one image is pulled over my eyes like wool. Her face. Bella._

_I've been running on autopilot for so long, sunk deep into my pain like a drowning victim, that I've almost forgotten what it's like to be human. I eat raw meat, I sleep curled up on the forest floor. My only baths are splashes through small creeks and rivers. I have shed my human skin like a snake. If only I could do the same with my thoughts._

_The trees are beginning to darken when I catch the hint of a thought, of something foreign. It's faint, but there. I haven't heard the thoughts of others in so long that it scares me into stopping. My toenails skid for a moment on the loose, packed dirt and then I'm still, my nose raised to the wind. I catch a strange scent wafting towards me from the mountains. A rich smell that's almost wolflike, almost like the smell of home, but it's tinged with something else, something copper and pungent, something rotten._

_Blood. Flesh._

_It only takes me a second before my muscles leap into action._

_I am at the house in a matter of minutes, a small two story cabin with lace curtains and carved doors with windows shaped into hearts. The smell is almost dizzying here. _

_The screen door at the back is shattered, and I crawl through as wolf. The floor is cluttered with stacks of books and pictures, as if the person living here is just moving in. A staircase curves around the back of the house, and I follow the horrible smell with some caution. Nothing I've seen so far as man or wolf will ever prepare me for what I am about to see._

_My stomach twists at the sight of a woman, lying broken and bloody across the stairs. Her body has been rampaged by claws and teeth. The entire left side of her once pretty face is missing, and I am reminded of Emily with a sharp pang. This woman was eaten by wolves, and she is soaked with that strange smell, that familiar musk._

_I stumble back into a small coffee table, sending a cordless phone and several books crashing to the floor. That smell, that smell of home is here in this house, hovering around this poor dead woman. I know that smell. I could identify any of my brothers (or Leah, although I usually know her from her constant mental bitching) by it. It isn't the smell of a mere wolf, but one of us. None of the gray wolves, the Olympia I had seen in the forests smelled like that._

_It's werewolf._

_I turn, and with the image of the woman in my mind, flee towards home._

Somewhere in the bowels of the forest, the glint of yellow eyes shines briefly in the twilight, and then blinks out.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, New Moon or Eclipse. I am merely playing with Meyer's hot werewolves for a while.

_You, if you were sensible,_

_When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful,_

_You would not turn and answer me_

_"The night is wonderful."_

_.-D.H. Lawrence, "Under the Oak."_

**PT III**

**Anne**

_When I am not dreaming of wolves, I dream of my brother. His face is so pale and cold now, his skin stretched so thin. I dream of the splotchy redness of his tears, of his clammy fingers. I dream of the two of us locked together in a hospital bed, anchoring each other to the earth, both afraid of fading away. Once upon a time, we both thought we were going to die. Death is less of reality now for me than Alan, but I know that if I could, I would willingly take his darkness into myself and let it swallow me whole. _

_We were eight years old when we overheard the doctors tell our parents that they shouldn't hope. I dream of that night the most, of Allen climbing into my uncomfortable hospital bed, of him putting his cold arms around me and touching his forehead to mine. We were eight years old, but wrapped around each other like babies in the womb. His hands were on my hair, and mine were at his back. His breath smelled like retching, like pain as he whispered, "Are you afraid?"_

_All I can remember, all I can dream is murmuring, "no."_

Anne remembers things she wishes she could forget.

Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night not to Alan's screams, but to the twin pounding of their hearts, echoing within her breast. She wishes she could forget those nights they laid together, sick and sweating, but the memories turn round and round like corkscrews in her head. Sometimes she thinks they've driven her mad, because she knows her brother is going to die.

* * *

Her father is an artist. He's really an engineer, but everyone in La Push except her mother ignores that fact. He owns a little shop about two blocks away from Old Quil's, the interior filled to the ceiling with carvings, paintings, masks, and books. It is a popular spot for tourists, especially elderly visitors from sunnier places.

Anne is sitting at the counter of the shop, the buzzing of a saw behind her in the back room, when Sue Clearwater enters. The little bell tied to the door announces her presence, and Anne looks up from her book curiously.

* * *

She goes to the beach because she likes to hear the sound of water, to remember the images from her dreams. She stands at the edge of the surf and feels like she's standing at the center of the earth, where sky and sea connect like dots. She holds her hands up toward the sky and feels the wind rushing through her fingers like sand.

At the beach, she doesn't feel the ghostly pangs of her brother's disease. She doesn't feel the leaden weight of wishes unspoken. There is only sand, and sky, and sea.

Nothing more.

* * *

Sue is beautiful, her long hair like a thick tail of silk. Anne rests her elbow on the carved wood of the counter and watches her shyly as she picks around the old wolf statues in the corner. Her face seems so much older now that Harry is gone. Anne remembers the man who once slipped her lollipops when he came to visit, who winked at her as he stood speaking in a low voice to her father. She cannot believe he's truly gone, that the beating of the drums guided him into the other world, the world she hopes her brother will never see.

But death is inevitable. You cannot fight it, escape it, or outrun it. Nor can you ignore it or wish it away.

* * *

Sometimes during the night, when the moon is high and the world is still in sleep, Anne sits up on her brother's bed, watching his face in the glow of the nightlight. He is so pale now, when he was once so dark, but his skin is warm. It almost burns her fingers when she touches them to his cheek, love gripping her heart so sturdily she feels like screaming.

She imagines that she can still feel the tumor underneath her skin, bubbling up like flame. The doctors tell her it's called a ghost tumor, but she knows better. She is a twin, and she feels everything her brother feels, even when she wants to feel nothing at all.

Alan, his face almost peaceful in the soft glow of the nightlight, shifts.

* * *

When Sue notices Anne, she strolls with an almost loping grace to the counter, where she leans one hip against the wood. "What are you reading?" she asks.

Anne turns a terrible shade of fuchsia. She's never told anyone, apart from her brother that she finds herself drawn to the lonely authors, the ones who write about the darkness inside, the madness. Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, D.H. Lawrence. Dante, Oscar Wilde, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Truman Capote. She feels connected to them somehow, through the cords that draw reader to author.

She lifts up her book and shows Sue the spine. _Lewis Carroll_, it reads, in bronze script. _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_.

Anne knows what Alice found, wishes she could find that too. A way to embrace madness. After all, didn't the Cheshire Cat say "we're all mad here?"

* * *

Nothing is harder, or harsher than the ache of loneliness. Anne knows she is to blame for her ghostlike reputation, but she doesn't care. She wishes the world worked differently. She wishes others would love first, instead of being inspired to love. What life has taught her is, you have to take things into your own hands. Otherwise, you'll be left standing on the beach alone, the wind shifting through your fingers like sand, leaving nothing. Nothing.

Which is why, four weeks after the disappearance of Jacob Black (the world seemed so cold when he went away), she welcomes the greetings of Sue Clearwater. Which is why, two days after that, she welcomes the arrival of four new boys across the street from her little house with an almost instant longing.

Maybe she doesn't have to be alone anymore.


End file.
